man's ear and
understanding who has any knowledge of the Greek tongue. And for what
other reason in truth should a man of parts and erudition be at the
pains to frequent the theatre, but for the sake of Menander only? And
when are the playhouses better filled with men of letters, than when his
comic mask is exhibited? And at private entertainments among friends,
for whom doth the table more justly make room or Bacchus give place than
for Menander? To philosophers also and hard students (as painters are
wont, when they have tired out their eyes at their work, to divert them
to certain florid and green colors) Menander is a repose from their
auditors and intense thinkings, and entertains their minds with gay
shady meadows refreshed with cool and gentle breezes.

He adds, moreover, that though this city breeds at this time very many
and excellent representers of comedy, Menander's plays participate of a
plenteous and divine salt, as though they were made of the very sea out
of which Venus herself sprang. But that of Aristophanes is harsh and
coarse, and hath in it an angry and biting sharpness. And for my part I
cannot tell where his so much boasted ability lies, whether in his
style or persons. The parts he acts I am sure are quite overacted and
depraved. His knave (for instance) is not fine, but dirty; his peasant
is not assured, but stupid; his droll is not jocose, but ridiculous; and
his lover is not gay, but lewd. So that to me the man seems not to have
written his poesy for any temperate person, but to have intended his
smut and obscenity for the debauched and lewd, his invective and satire
for the malicious and ill-humored.

END OF FIFTEEN------

THE MALICE OF HERODOTUS.

The style, O Alexander, of Herodotus, as being simple, free, and easily
suiting itself to its subject, has deceived many; but more, a persuasion
of his dispositions being equally sincere. For it is not only (as Plato
says) an extreme injustice, to make a show of being just when one is not
so; but it is also the highest malignity, to pretend to simplicity and
mildness and be in the meantime really most malicious. Now since he
principally exerts his malice against the Boeotians and Corinthians,
though without sparing any other, I think myself obliged to defend our
ancestors and the truth against this part of his writings, since those
who would detect all his other lies and fictions would have need of many
books. But, as Sophocles has it,